The Price of Order
by JiVado
Summary: A young in age, but old in experience Imperial Officer writes out his memoirs on a hologram in an attempt to justify his actions over his years as an officer.
1. Chapter 1

A hologram blinks to life showing the faint blue image of a young man wearing the uniform of an Imperial officer. The numerous medals on his chest show he is a lieutenant with numerous awards for successful battles and completing tasks assigned by the Empire. His officer's cap is tucked under his right arm while his left holds the recording device.

"Duty is a cruel mistress. As an officer of now seven years those words only become heavier with each new 'peace keeping' mission I am sent on. Every day she asks for more, every day I struggle to provide her with my all, but I know in the end she will ask for more than I can provide and in the end she will take my life as a final payment. These are the memoirs of a tired old soldier, may whoever watches this view me in a better light than what I feel I have become."

The hologram blinks out before returning with the same man, wearing the same uniform, but now he is seated behind a desk with his fingers laced together in front of his face.

"I suppose it is worth starting at the beginning, not that it has much of a bearing upon my actions, but worth cataloging nonetheless. My father was a middle class merchant on Corellia selling used starship parts and coordinating a team of three mechanics to either strip down ships or install parts independent pilots would purchase. My mother was considered 'collateral damage' during one of the battles of the Clone Wars when I was a young child.. The specifics of her death are still classified and my father would always avoid the subject when I would ask. I guess I learned quickly the subject caused him too much pain to continue bringing it up. By the time I was 18 I enrolled in the Academy and was found to have an aptitude for ground based combat and leadership. I was trained, like countless others before and after me, in tactics, various forms of hand to hand combat as well as armed combat, and leadership. Perhaps the most important training they provided was duty. The honor of our galactic empire road on the shoulders of command. If we failed, the Empire failed."

The officer pauses in thought before standing and pacing back and forth behind the desk.

"I remember my first assignment. I was a shiny new sergeant in command of eight other men in my squad. All of them fresh out of training, none of us ready for the hell that our mission on Burus would bring. Intelligence told us that Burus was being used as a temporary home for a group of smugglers and it would just be a single platoon flying down in two Lambda shuttles to exercise a warrant for their arrest."

The figure stops pacing and turns to face the recording device.

"At the time I thought ISB would know what they were sending us into and weigh the risk before assigning troops. At least now I know never to let my guard down despite what intel claims. See, Burus is a small planetoid in the outer rim. As the second planetoid in the system it is still close enough to its star to be tidally locked, which means there is one side that is always day and the other always night. With the day side temperatures hot enough to overload the shields on our shuttles and the night side cold enough to freeze our troops we had approach on the night side in order to land on the terminator and search out this den of smugglers whom we were to arrest.

With little intel to go off of we landed and the platoon was split into two squads each to search out a series of caverns we thought was being used by the smugglers. The other officer's name in the shuttle with me escapes me after so many years, but I do remember him being overzealous to apprehend the criminals and demanding his squad take point. The cavern on Burus was truly massive. If one wanted to I wouldn't doubt they would be able to land a freighter deep inside it. After half an hour of walking further into the cave we found ourselves surrounded by nearly fifty Barabel warriors. Outnumbered more than two to one I wasn't about to make the mistake of ordering my men to attack when our enemy had the numbers and ground, not to mention the natural armor and skill at working in the darkness of the caves. Unfortunately, my fellow officer did not have the same idea and drew his blaster before ordering his squad to charge. His recklessness distracted our enemies long enough for me to shout out a command to my men to find cover and provide him with covering fire.

As a group of freshly trained grunts, my squad was armed mostly with blaster rifles and a single light repeater. Only the two of us sergeants wore blast plate armor and the rest of the men were in the Grays. As the sergeant blindly charged the lines of the Barabels I ordered my men to toss out their grenades at the surrounding aliens. Thankfully some of the other squad followed my commands and fell into cover as well as their leader was cut down by the four lead lizards that were armed with old slugthrowers. The remainder of the aliens began to rush our ranks through the covering fire and grenades intent to rend us in pieces with their claws.

Fortunately many of the unarmed lizards fell to the initial volley but their four leaders began to tear apart the other squad with their rifles. My sidearm was doing little to halt the approach of our prey turned predators, instead I turned my attention towards pulling the other squad back and consolidating the forces. The light repeater from the other squad was down and many of the men were engaging their enemies in the open. I still don't know what drove me to stand and run towards the other squad, but by the time I registered what I was doing I was already halfway there and firing my sidearm into the side plating of one of the closer Barabel's skulls as he was rearing back to strike at one of exposed troopers. The next few moments are a crystal clear blurr burned into my memory, but faded with time. I remember rolling and scooping up the repeater from the cavern floor as solid shot ricocheted around me. A command yelled out to the troops around, but my senses were so sharpened by adrenaline that it played out in an unintelligible slow motion. My first shot with the much heavier weapon going wild, but the second one burning through the armored plating of one of the armed Barabels. My eyes shifted to seek a new target only to see the combined fire of my squad drop a second to the ground. By the time I had shifted to the third it had taken cover behind a large boulder, but the repeater punched through splintering the rock and sending shards into the air. The final target turned to flee when one of the troopers unleashed one of the last grenades and landed it at the feet of the fleeing assailant.

With the death of most of the targets, injuring of the rest the battle had been won. I only realized after the fact how strong my heart was beating as I stood to take stock of the men only to feel my pulse thumping in my head. I remember giving orders while still deafened by the concussive blast of grenades and the firefight in such a close proximity, thankfully none of them showed any complaints about the same symptoms and we executed the mop up on autopilot. Our training had kicked in and the men went about securing what prisoners we could take while the medics and myself took stock of how many men we had lost.

Of the eighteen men who had descended from the Lambda shuttle only a while previous, only 10 would be returning, and most of them were injured in some way or another. It was too risky to send a runner back out of the cavern alone to call in support, so we moved as a group, escorting the prisoners, and leaving the dead.

I would later learn that the other squads had run into similar situation, although the lieutenant fared better at coordinating his defense and took fewer losses before pulling back as well. I received a commendation for valor on Burus, but the first experience of duty's weight still rests uneasily on me."

The holocron blinks off.


	2. Chapter 2

The holocron blinks back to life displaying only the bust of the officer. His cap is once again missing from atop his head revealing a close cropped dark hair with the true color obscured by the blue hue of the image. Several shallow scars cover his face from where bacta treatment was unable to fully heal him. The most predominant of which runs down from above his left eyebrow, along the ridge of his nose, and finally ending with a hooked slash to the right.

"With the engagement on Burus being only a minor footnote for one of the countless cogs of the Imperial Army I believe it would be best to give a general timeline. Records of Burus exist, but it is just easier to say that it was the thirteenth year of the Empire.

After our initial engagement on Burus and following retreat for additional troops back to our Victory class Destroyer, _The Vigilant_, it was Lieutenant Orion who came to the conclusion that we had stumbled upon a Barabel nest rather than smuggling grounds. Naturally nocturnal for the night side, and armored plating to resist the radiation on the day side we officers concluded that this enemy would have far greater an advantage than any smuggler group could pose to our troops. The Lieutenant, myself, and Sergeant Palms; the only other remaining sergeant from our platoon, all held a series of secret strategic planning sessions. IA was not going to reinforce us with additional troops, our failure to dislodge the 'smugglers' on our first assault was not seen favorably and apart from replacing some of the troopers we lost, there would be no additional aid sent.

It was Sergeant Palms who volunteered to haggle with the requisitions office and acquire additional heavy firepower for our men. The LT managed to secure several armored speeders we would be hiding in our shuttles, and I spoke with the ships medic to get a few combat medics to volunteer for what we all knew was going to turn into a bloodbath. We were lucky enough to secure an additional light repeater for each squad, resupply of our grenades, and two heavy speeders with mounted E-Web's on each. Only one combat medic was available for our deployment as the rest of the doctors were occupied or not trained in combat maneuvers.

Our two shuttles dropped from hyperspace above Burus for a second time and descended together across the terminator. We were operating an officer down and the Lieutenant would be coordinating the leaderless squad himself. We knew someone or something was operating a ship out of this system so our shuttles were ordered to take to the sky once more and provide cover should anyone escape. With thirty six men we entered those caverns again as a unified force; despite our heavier loadout the tension from our last was clear on all of the men.

Lieutenant Orion ordered my squad to take the lead, Sergeant Palm would have the rear, and the LT's two squads would hold the center as we pushed deeper into the caverns. As a young officer you think you're ready for anything. You think you've been trained to handle anything. One thing they never really train you in is how to deal with your own mind. Sure they train you how to stay in formation. They train you how to act and give commands while under fire. They don't train you how to endure the racing of your mind, the heightened senses of fear, and calming your soul as you walk into the mouth of the beast holding formation.

We passed the sight of our previous battle. Blaster marks scorched the rocks and explosions from our grenades pock marked the area. None of the corpses remained, but the drag marks revealed where they had gone."

The holocron blinks out for a moment and when it returns the officer is standing with his back to the recorder. His hands are clasped behind his back, pulling his shoulders back as if standing at attention.

"We had left many of the fallen in our hasty retreat."

The officer pauses for several moments before continuing.

"We pushed on towards the nest. At this point I started to coordinate my men forward always making sure at least half of them were in cover and able to provide support as others moved up. I never allowed more than one of my squads light repeaters to break cover without being sure the other was ready to provide covering fire. As we progressed deeper in the caves the ceiling began to lower and the walls pressed in tighter. Lieutenant Orion moved one of the heavy speeders up to provide support for my squad.

I remember the sensors of the speeder chirping in response to a located power source only a fraction of a second before blowing up. Most of my men had been in cover under my coordination, but I was close enough to the explosion to be thrown around like some child's doll. When I came to my ears were ringing and the red bolts of blaster fire from all squads as they fired deeper into the caves soared over my head.. Peeking from cover for only a moment I caught sign of a turret emplacement that the lizards had cut off a starship and positioned in front of their nest for defense. My squad, as fresh grunts are apt to do, were firing at anything and everything without coordination. As my hearing began to clear I could barely make out the LT commanding his men forward so we could add more blasters to the front line and unclog the rear ranks that our abrupt stop had caused. I, in turn, ordered my men to begin leapfrogging forward while focusing fire on the turret emplacement. A few of the men with better pitching arms managed to send some grenades up, and the coordinated fire was proving effective, but when someone reinforces a position with starship grade armor it is a rather tough nut to crack.

At the time I didn't know the soldiers name, but I would later write a letter to his family commending him for his bravery and service. Private James Starskipper took several breaching charges he and another private in my squad still had on them. Under covering fire of the other squads James rushed the gun emplacement and was in the process of securing the breaching charges when one of the defending Barabel sliced into him with their claws."

The officers voice becomes more solemn as he continues his story.

"Mortally wounded it was Private James Starskippers final act to set off the charges, destroying the gun emplacement assaulting his fellow soldiers, killing several enemies, and ending his own life as a hero to his men."

The holocron blinks off.


End file.
